Thursday, June 14, 2012

Love

Oh shit. What the fuck do I know about love? I am not an expert in this department. I love too easily, get hurt too much and generally have a love/hate relationship with myself and the world.

In reference to eating disorders and addiction, people will tell you that you have to love yourself in order to get well. I say that's bullshit, but I went about healing in all kinds of backwards ways. Ultimately, it's true that you have to respect yourself enough to get well, but my journey of health started because I loved the people around me enough to not want to continue hurting them. Plus, I got to a point where I was embarrassed that I was an adult behaving like a child, stuck in an irrational illness that was slowly killing me. Eventually, I learned to tolerate myself, and then I started to even like the person I had become. Love though? That's a bit of a stretch. We all have a "light" and "shadow" side, and I'm to the point where I embrace both. I can't say that I love my dark side though- my bouts of anger, laziness or childishness, and I know I don't like inflicting that part of me on others.

There's just too much to say about love. Look at all the books, poems, songs, movies and TV shows that deal with love as a topic. Love stinks, Love is a Battlefield, Love hurts, Love will keep us together? Sure, OK. Clearly humans know shit about love. It's not even a definable emotion. It means about 20 different things, and people will describe it in all kinds of ways. Rather than insist you must love yourself in order to get well (there are no hard rules when it comes to getting well. I believe that everyone is different and can find their own path of recovery), I will say that it helps to be at peace with yourself and trust yourself in order to recover.

When I was younger, I craved the love and attention that I lacked, because the focus of my parents was so often on my sister who was quite sick with a kidney infection when she was little. I think I tried to fill that hole with food, something I'm sure others have done too. When things get really chaotic in my life, like now, I have a really hard time knowing what I want or feel or even need. It's odd that even without being able to put a definition on it, everyone knows when love strikes.

I don't know. Love can seem so desperate and needy. I keep thinking of this song that was popular in the 90's: